Archive: http://www.fanworkrecs.com
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters from Gundam Wing, I just play with them for non-profit fun until they run screaming back to their creators.
Warnings: AU - AAAAAAAAAAAU. Some yaoi, lemon, violence, language. You should be a legal adult to read this. Open-mindedness helps, too.
Pairings: all over the map; Duo-centric. yaoi and het.
Author's Notes: A huge helping of "suspension of disbelief" would be appropriate before you read this. I'm sure J or G could explain the science behind it, but they're kinda dead right now...
Part 6 ~ Mess (cont'd)
Duo clasped his hands together, trying to stop them from waving around. He couldn't seem to control his arms very well.
He pushed his body's problems out of his mind for now. He had to tell Tro how to get down the corridor without being fried. He also wanted to avoid saying the correct route out loud, or letting Wheat see it through the vidlink, so the gang would be trapped where they were. The only things between Wheat and the dangerous contents of the lab were this corridor and the entry door's lock.
A major shudder started working its way up his spine, and he awkwardly shoved himself back from the first pair of pressure plates. Falling on them would be a Very Bad Idea.
"C'mere," he said to Trowa. "Gimme a hand."
The tall man pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against and came closer, stopping with his good arm towards Duo.
Duo grabbed his forearm and pulled himself to his feet, wincing internally at Trowa's gasp as the movement jostled the Preventer's injured shoulder. Not sure if he could stand on his own, Duo hung on and hauled Trowa around until the acrobat was between Duo and the gang clustered at the other end of the corridor.
He pointed with a shaking hand. "Start on the right, go up one, go left, go straight. You got that?"
Trowa nodded, staring down the corridor, his face pale and sweating. Duo knew the shoulder had to be giving him hell, but there was no time to deal with it now.
Duo pulled on Tro's good arm, making him turn and face him. "Repeat it," he insisted. As soon as the taller man looked down at him, he mouthed, "Right, diagonal left, diagonal right," making sure that his face was blocked from sight of the gang.
Trowa blinked, then parroted back, "Right, straight, left, straight," while Duo desperately tried to mouth the correct route again while his head quivered back and forth and his tongue suddenly felt four times too large. Trowa nodded as Duo finished, and met his eyes. "I've got it," he said simply.
"Ther's a dor..." Oh, crap, his words were slurring now - he sounded like he was drunk. Great.
"The door at the end of the corridor?" Trowa said slowly. "It has a keypad next to it. I would guess it's trapped, too. I take it you want me to be the one to enter the code, just in case the keypad is designed to kill anyone failing to enter a correct one."
Duo took advantage of Tro's long speech to mouth "Passcode - six nine two four eight zero one" Trowa nodded at the end, but Duo repeated it again for good measure.
"Tha's righ'. Gotta get the most outta you." Duo said aloud. He let go of Trowa, his legs holding him for now. "Get goin'." He shoved slightly at Tro's good arm.
He felt Trowa move forward, so he turned to face Wheat. He didn't want the camera relaying the safe route.
Wheat looked annoyed, Duo decided. He waved, an uncoordinated jerk of one arm. "Hey, bossss! Ther's jus' a dor a' th'end o' th' corrdor. 'm not sure 'f s'linked to the press'r pla'e's r'not." Dammit, Wheat wouldn't be able to understand half of that, and he might just send one of his goons to check it out.
He waved again, in what was meant to be a reassuring manner, before stepping sideways onto the first pressure plate. He kept his head up, determined not to look down and give the camera a clear view of where his feet were stepping.
Trowa was already at the end of the corridor, with his back against the wall beside the door. Duo turned his head away - it looked like Tro was attempting to enter the code behind his back with his one good hand.
Duo almost snickered. There wasn't an awful lot he could look at, actually - not the floor, not the end of the hallway, not Tro, not the keypad... He stared at the ceramic tiles on the wall, trying to feel his way with his feet.
He stepped onto the second safe tile and shuffled sideways.
Odd... The wall was drifting up...
Duo was sprawled on the pressure plate before he realized he was falling. His arms and legs began to wave and jerk. His head fell to the side, and he registered Trowa's worried look - it was almost the same as his normal impassive expression - before a veritable wall of memories rose up and seized his mind.
Sister Helen was dying in his arms while mobile suits exploded around him as he swept his scythe through space but Quatre was signalling him and he hurt so bad as Heero half- dragged him from the cell into the corridor as he dove, rolling, firing the sub-machine gun and people were screaming as the café exploded just missing his team of Preventers drove away with him clinging to the bottom of the jeep and he burrowed deeper into the garbage so the grownups wouldn't find him and he screamed as the beam cannon hit his poor damaged Deathscythe and his buddy exploded and Wufei was looking at him with concern but damn he looked sexy all sleep-rumpled and half-uncovered like that leaning back against Zechs dancing with Noin at Relena's Christmas ball where hundreds of people were talking around the tree - a real tree - shimmering with tinsel and candles and white angels people talking white angels white so white... so white..
White...
It filled his vision for what seemed like a long time before it finally resolved into ceramic tiles. The voices from the party now sounded louder, angrier.
White ceramic tiles... He should know what that meant...
Realization came. He was lying in the second half of the trapped hallway, with Wheat's two goons standing in the corner, arguing over the best route to take to go retrieve him. The door to the lab was shut, and there was no sign of Trowa.
Oh, shit.
He couldn't believe Trowa had gone on without him. Uneasily, he remembered other times when Tro had been ready to leave him behind during the wars. A feeling of worthlessness swept over him - at least during the wars he had been useful as a pilot, but now...
Now he was a washed-up druggie, too shaky to even walk down a corridor without falling over, too uninteresting to keep his lover, too weak-willed to refuse more drugs, too screwed up, too pathetic, too useless, too weak, too-
Anger came welling up from deep within him, washing away the regrets and depression. Anger firmed his trembling lips, narrowed his watery eyes, and straightened his slumping spine. Anger was an old friend. Anger - the furious will to survive, the stubborn refusal to bow down and accept his apparent fate - had been the one thing that had let him survive to adulthood.
He snarled at himself, despising his self-pity. He had had the power to change the future of the entire world, once. So what if he had lost his lover? He still had the power to decide his own future. He would live his life, wretched as it might be, on his own terms. And he refused - absolutely refused - to be dragged down by such a low-life scum as Alvek Wheat.
Ignoring the two goons arguing behind him, he swept the vidlink off his head and snapped it in two, cutting the power to the tiny camera. It took him several tries to get to his feet, but he gritted his teeth and kept pushing himself up, and finally he found his balance.
The goons were yelling at him to stop moving, that he would kill them all. He grinned back at them, then turned away, letting them sweat. They couldn't stop him with their guns - in the light gravity the recoil would send them flying backwards, ruining their aim, and the risks of his body falling on the wrong floor tile or a stray bullet piercing the hull were too great to ignore.
Duo lurched onto the last pressure plate, locked his eyes on the entry keypad at the end of the hall, and stumbled forward. He would not fall.
He made it - barely - and leaned against the lab door, peering at the numbered keys. His hand trembled and shook, and he had to paw at the cancel button twice.
A quick glance showed one of the goons standing on the first safe pressure plate, staring at the three adjoining plates with nervous concentration. Duo swore softly - he was running out of time.
He grabbed his right wrist in his left hand and held it as steady as he could while he entered the code. It took all his concentration and patience, but he finally managed it.
His "Yes!" of victory turned into a squawk of dismay as the door he was leaning on slid to one side and he fell into the lab, arms windmilling in a futile attempt to regain his balance. He landed softly and bounced in the light gravity, still flailing.
He caught sight of the goon following him taking a wincing step onto the second safe plate. Damn it!! The two men in the corner had seen Duo go from that plate to the end of the corridor - they knew which plate to step on next. He had to get the lab door closed before he had unwelcome company.
He thrashed and struggled and managed to get himself onto his hands and knees, but Wheat's man was bounding forward from the last plate and he wouldn't be able to make it in time no matter how determined he was.
Trowa straightened from behind a lab bench and leaned over, slapping the door control with his good hand and sliding the panel shut right in the furious criminal's face. A muffled thump immediately afterward indicated that the man had been unable to cancel his forward momentum in time to avoid a rather forceful collision.
Duo pushed himself to his feet, smirking at that happy thought.
The smirk died when he got a good look at Trowa, leaning against the wall as if he didn't have the energy to stand unaided, his injured arm cradled in the good one. The Preventer's face was very pale, his lips and chin spotted with blood, and his temples dark with sweat.
Then Duo realized that his friend had reached forward to shut the door - his bound hands were no longer pinioned behind his body. He pictured the acrobat squirming around, sliding his hips and long legs through the circle of his arms. It must have been agonizing with a dislocated shoulder - the blood was from Trowa biting his own lip.
"Put... my shoulder... back in place," Trowa said quietly, between careful breaths.
Duo shuddered, remembering Heero setting his own broken leg. "But that acid capsule in your thigh is the bigger threat right now," he argued. Blood he could handle.
Trowa shook his head, gasping slightly as the movement pulled at his shoulder. "Can you... cut it out?
Duo was silent, knowing that he couldn't - his unsteady hands would probably slice open an artery, or the capsule itself.
Tro blinked, tiredly. "I'll do it. But... need both hands. Shoulder first. Med-kit?"
Duo headed for the first aid station at the centre of the lab. "Yeah. You need a pain killer?"
"Yes. And a muscle relaxant. Spasms."
"I take it you know how to do this?"
"Yeah. Saw it once."
Duo snorted. Heero and his broken leg, Trowa and his dislocated shoulder. Maybe they actually deserved each other.
End Page 24
(:./wingnut/alter24)
